Zoopla continues expansion drive by purchasing UpMyStreet

Online property portal Zoopla has continued its consolidation drive with the purchase of UpMyStreet.com, a website offering information on local communities across the UK.

Zoopla has paid an undisclosed sum to acquire UpMyStreet from E.W.Scripps, which has held a controlling stake in the vendor since 2006.

Under the terms of the deal, it is likely that the UpMyStreet brand will be subsumed into Zoopla; visitors to upmystreet.com are already being redirected to the homepage of its acquisitor.

UpMyStreet has long been one of Britain’s favourite property sites, having notched 600,000 unique visits in March alone. Founded in 1998, it has built up a wealth of information on property prices, crime hotspots and job openings across the UK.

Zoopla, which currently attracts around 12.5 million visitors a month, will hope that, by mining UpMyStreet’s data, it can make its own offering more intuitive and targeted.

Since completing a series C funding round worth £3.25m in 2010, Zoopla has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy, snapping up sites such as Thinkproperty.com and merging with Digital Property Group.

Zoopla’s founder and CEO Alex Chesterman said his company “has had a commercial relationship with UpMyStreet.com for some time. This acquisition is a natural fit for us and allows us to further extend our audience and reach, for the benefit of our members”.